194, 195. MITTON, W.R. YORKSHIRE
HEAD OF CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD, SHOWING OBVERSE AND REVERSE FACES
At Chester, where Watergate Street ends and Eastgate Street begins, and where, at the point of junction, Bridge Street leads off at a right angle southward to the Dee Bridge, there stood the High Cross on a hexagonal platform or step outside the entrance to the Pentice, which itself extended the whole length of the south side of St Peter's Church. The design of this cross was so abnormal that one is at a loss to place it under any known classification. A plain cylindrical column supported an immense and lofty superstructure, exceeding the height of shaft and socket put together, and consisting of a double-storeyed lantern, with two tiers of niches for statues surrounding it. The whole was surmounted by an orb and cross, but the drawing by Randle Holme the third, among the Harleian manuscripts at the British Museum (Fig. [24]), gives two alternative details to finish off the summit, viz., a crucifix, or a crowned shield of the royal arms. The High Cross was newly gilded in 1529. It was overthrown and defaced by the Puritans in 1646, or, according to another account, in 1648. "In 1804 the remains were discovered buried in the porch of St Peter's Church, and were taken to Netherleigh House, and there used to form a kind of ornamental rockwork in the gardens." The late Archdeacon Barber, writing in 1910, says that in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester there is a plain stone block, which, though without any of the richly sculptured ornament depicted by Holme, purports to be the head of the ancient cross, while "the shaft is said to be in the grounds of Plas Newydd, at Llangollen."
196. RIPLEY, W.R. YORKSHIRE
BASE IN THE CHURCHYARD
There is, again, a certain type of cross which cannot exactly be classified under any of the previously described varieties. The type in question, as exemplified at Alphington (Fig. [199]) and at St Loye's, Wonford, near Exeter (Fig. [198]), appears to be peculiar to Devonshire. At first sight the cross looks much like a variety of monolith, but the cross-head is in fact worked in a separate block of stone. The shortness of the arms, as compared with the height of the upper limb, is striking. Another feature is a small niche or hollow sunk in the face of the cross at the point of intersection. For the rest, the socket does not differ at all from many examples occurring in the shaft-on-steps group.
The cross-head at Mitton, Yorkshire (Figs. [194], [195]), is peculiar inasmuch as the crucifixion is sculptured on both faces, but in totally different fashions. That on the west face has the arms stretched horizontally, within a sexfoil frame, and might well be of the thirteenth century. Whereas the sculpture on the east face, though much more weatherworn, is of a style that could not have been designed before the late-fourteenth, or perhaps even the fifteenth century. The arms of the Christ in this instance are drawn upwards in an unusually oblique direction. It is impossible that these two representations could have been executed at one and the same date. The circular outline of the head, too, is peculiar, and suggestive rather of a gable-cross than of a standing cross. Possibly the west face only was sculptured in the first instance, for a gable-cross, the sculpture on the east face being added later in order to adapt the stone for the head of a churchyard cross. Anyhow, since Buckler's drawings were made, the head has been mounted on a modern shaft and pedestal.